Thursday 17 October 1940

Fighter-bomber attacks on London and Kent.

Limited visibility did much to mask the Luftwaffe whose raids started soon after breakfast. Ninety Bf 109s and Bf 110s raided Margate, Broadstairs and Stanmore.

They were back after lunch and throughout the afternoon appeared in large and small concentrations or in streams, feinting, weaving, splitting up and then rejoining, using cloud to maximum effect, employing every ruse to elude and confuse the defences.

At one of London’s key arteries, Waterloo Station, a bomb smashed all automatic signalling and signal telephones. Fourteen inexperienced station staff and a handful of soldiers somehow kept trains moving using flags.

British fighters enjoyed a moderate success. They destroyed five enemy aircraft and lost three of their own in combat. Luftwaffe losses for the day totalled fifteen.